Our first storm

It is ironic, that having lived here through the peak of hurricane season with no storms to speak of, our first ‘named’ storm actually happened AFTER the season was officially over! As someone on one of the storm bulletin boards remarked; “nature can’t read the gregorian calendar”.

At about 3am this morning I was woken by the howling winds, lashing rain, thunder and lightning of sub-tropical storm Olga. We knew it was coming last night, so had shut all our windows and removed our plastic furniture from the balcony. A wise precaution as it turned out. The power flickered in and out a few times while I was up, but I’m happy to report both power and water are working normally here this morning.

I was up for about half an hour watching the storm last night. According to the weather info this morning, the wind speed was 40mph with gusts of up to 57mph. It seemed a lot stronger than that to me, especially when you consider a category five hurricane is 4 times as powerful with sustained wind speeds above 155mph!!!

I must admit I love storms and was actually looking forward to experiencing a (small) hurricane at some point. Having seen last night’s storm, and how weak it was compared to a hurricance, now I’m not so sure!!

It’s been raining very hard for the past few hours. All our windows are closed but the house is still a tad chilly… We are both wearing long pants (that’s trousers for you brits) and I was even planning to blow dry my hair for the very first time since moving over (so over 3 months now). However, the power outage took care of that plan.

stay dry! that hallway of yours looks like a nice place to hang out if things get really hairy out there (albeit not affording much of a view for stormwatchers). we have icicles hanging from the car bumpers and branches but otherwise pretty mild winter.